


The Rest of Forever

by LittleRaven



Category: The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Character Study, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:59:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15381183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: Ariel looks ever upwards. Prompt: "I just love seeing this happy young girl who loves her special interests so much!!"





	The Rest of Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FallacyFallacy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallacyFallacy/gifts).



> Title from Vienna Teng's ["Level Up."](https://youtu.be/U4n_8R5lKnw)

Ariel pulls at the seaweed. Her heart rises in her throat; her hands tense with the excitement. Under them, the object is smooth and round, like so many things in the water. But not. She can’t put a name to it. It’s black, heavy. Three holes. She slips her hand through the biggest one, where it fits whole, peering into the darkness of the smallest. She can just barely see her fingers wiggling. 

The sight makes her laugh. It doesn’t make any sense; could it be an instrument? Taking her hand out, this time slipping it through the perfectly medium-sized gap which allowed her to grip it, she blew on the smallest hole. Nothing. Well. She can’t get anywhere just leaving it behind. Ariel bundles it in her arms, careful on her way back. 

Daddy’s lessons have stuck, even if not quite the way he meant. He doesn’t like things that don’t belong here, under the water, and Ariel thinks this might be one of them. Better not to cause him any stress. She’ll find a place to put it eventually, away from the bedroom a princess can’t have to herself. That should be good. No strange things around to upset her father, and she can still investigate.

Humming, she heads up with a sudden flip of her tail, before continuing home. 

 

She’s on land at last, and it’s startling how much things can be the same, yet brand new. The chariot has a weight to it; she takes the reins, relishes the feeling of making it fly as the horses jump. Water drips from her skin. 

Ariel’s in the air, and it’s so interesting, how going up always means coming down. She looks to Eric, wondering if he too would feel this, if it’s possible—and it seems so. His face is an echo of her own, the way it looks in the mirror when she’s shown it by Carlotta at the end of every day here: she can tell it’s that way now, lips stretched, stretching wider. 

She loves Flounder still, but it’s good. It’s good her partner understands, without a word. In the moment, she doesn’t think of her lost voice and all the uses which have been expected of it. 

 

The blue shifts into a lighter shade. Under the tapestry of her wedding bed, Ariel follows it with her minds-eye, up to the place Scuttle calls—she confirms with both Eric and Grimsby—a horizon. It matches the sea so well, she wonders why there’s any difference. 

There must be another world out there. Just as on land, there must be a place so high no one can see it, from where the storms come roiling. She reads in the library, because there are no more restrictions laid on what she can reach. Her hands touch the land of the sylphs on a page. 

One day she’ll see it too, she knows. As much as she loves where it all started, she’d known there was so much more than Atlantica had to offer. She’d known to leave, to find a place where sea meets surface and someone who shares a love of seeing past the edge of what they understand. 

They don’t need to name the path to know where they’re going.


End file.
